Fanning et al, performed a randomized study in which patients received either magnesium 178 mEq or placebo for 4 days following surgery, showing that the incidence of AF was lower in the
Trang 1R E V I E W Open Access
Pharmacologic prophylaxis for atrial fibrillation following cardiac surgery: a systematic review
Ioanna Koniari*, Efstratios Apostolakis, Christina Rogkakou, Nikolaos G Baikoussis, Dimitrios Dougenis
Abstract
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia occurring after cardiac surgery Its incidence varies depend-ing on type of surgery Postoperative AF may cause hemodynamic deterioration, predispose to stroke and increase mortality Effective treatment for prophylaxis of postoperative AF is vital as reduces hospitalization and overall mor-bidity Beta - blockers, have been proved to prevent effectively atrial fibrillation following cardiac surgery and should be routinely used if there are no contraindications Sotalol may be more effective than standard b-blockers for the prevention of AF without causing an excess of side effects Amiodarone is useful when beta-blocker ther-apy is not possible or as additional prophylaxis in high risk patients Other agents such as magnesium, calcium channels blocker or non-antiarrhythmic drugs as glycose-insulin - potassium, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids, N-acetylcysteine and statins have been studied as alternative treatment for postoperative AF
prophylaxis
Introduction
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia
occurring after cardiac surgery and its peak incidence is
between second or third postoperative day
Postopera-tive AF ranges depending on surgery type Especially,
AF occurs in nearly 30% of patients undergoing
coron-ary bypass grafting (CABG), and in 40% and 50% of
patients after valve surgery alone or combined valve and
CABG surgery respectively [1,2] Pathophysiologic
para-meters such as the abnormal electrophysiological state
of the atria, the unequal shortening of the atrial
myo-cytes refractory period as well as variable conduction
speed through the atrial tissue predispose to the
devel-opment of AF It is also considered that ischemia of the
atrial tissue, increased sympathetic activation, and
exag-gerated inflammatory response may play a triggering
role in the development of postoperative AF [3] Risk
factors of postsurgical AF could be divided into:
preo-perative, intra-operative and postoperative Preoperative
factors mainly include: a atrial tissue damages due to
age, previous rheumatic fever, elevated left ventricular
diastolic pressure, hypertension and coronary syndromes
[4-9], b heart diseases such as left ventricular
hypertro-phy, left atrium enlargement or history of congestive
heart failure [4,10], and c.electrolytic imbalance such as hypokalemia, hypomagnesemia, hypothyroidism, preo-perative use of digoxin or milrinone [4,11] Finally, obe-sity, male gender, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), tachycardia, prolonged P-wave deviation may also predispose to AF [10,12-19] While, intra-operative risk factors could be attributed to increased sympathetic activation due to stimulation of catecholamines, reflex sympathetic activation from volume loss, anemia, pain, adrenergic drug administration, aortic cross clumping duration, early return of atrial electrical activity after cardioplegia, bicaval venous cannulation, left ventricular venting via pulmonary vein as well as extracorporeal cir-culation [4,6,14,18] Postoperative AF may be correlated with hemodynamic deterioration (myocardial infarction, heart failure, thromboembolism, bleeding due to antic-oagulation), stroke, hypomagnesemia [15], extubation time [16], and others as increase in postoperative P-wave dispersion [17] and exaggerated inflammation reaction [18-21] Consequently, the effective treatment for the prevention of postoperative AF is of vital impor-tance Numerous pharmacologic strategies attempt to reduce the incidence of postoperative AF Overall, most reported studies demonstrate a positive effect with a variety of pharmacologic agents either anti-arrhythmic (b-blocker, amiodarone, magnesium, calcium blocker) or non-antiarrhythmic drugs (glycose-insulin-potassium,
* Correspondence: iokoniari@yahoo.gr
Cardiothoracic Surgery Department Patras University, School of Medicine.
Rion Patras, Greece
© 2010 Koniari et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
Trang 2non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids,
N-acetylcysteine, statins); to date, however, no signal
particular agent or combination of agent have
comple-tely eliminated post cardiac surgery AF
Pharmacologic prophylaxis for postoperative
atrial fibrillation
Beta-blockers
All identified meta-analyses demonstrated that
b-block-ers significantly reduced the incidence of postoperative
AF [9-13] Particularly, Andrews et al, showed that the
incidence of post-CABG AF decreased from 34% to 8,
7% in patients received b-blockers In another
meta-ana-lysis of Kowey et al, the decrease in incidence of AF was
from 20% to 8, 7% [22] However, Crystal et al
per-formed the largest meta-analysis based on 27
rando-mised controlled trials that included 3.840 patients
Especially, the control group presented an incidence of
AF approximately 33%, while notably patients receiving
b-blockers had an incidence of 19% [23] Ferguson et al
[24], in another large retrospective analysis of the
Thor-acic Surgeons surgical database that included 629.877
patients, observed the morbidity and mortality rate
asso-ciated with the peri-operative use of b-blockers Notably,
they revealed a reduction in mortality rate from 3.4% to
2.8% in patients that received peri-operatively
b-block-ers Numerous randomized trials have been conducted
so as to evaluate the effectiveness of b-blockers in the
prevention of AF In b-Blocker Length of Stay (BLOS)
trial, Connolly et al, evaluated the efficacy of metoprolol
against placebo therapy in preventing postoperative AF
in 1000 patients undergoing cardiac surgery [25] In all,
85% of patients had CABG surgery and the remainder
had valve surgery or combined valve and CABG surgery
The administered daily dose of metoprolol was 100 or
150 mg starting immediately after the surgery and
con-tinued until discharge from the hospital The incidence
of postoperative AF was significantly lower in
metopro-lol group (31%) compared to placebo (39%),
represent-ing a relative risk reduction of 20%
Similarly, Lucio et al, randomized 200 patients
under-went isolated CABG to receive either metoprolol or no
drug [26] Metoprolol was given orally adjusted to
main-tain optimal heart rate and started from the 12th hour
to the 7th postoperative day or hospital discharge
Post-operative AF and flutter occurred at 24% in control
ver-sus 11% in metoprolol group (p = 0.02) Tsuboi et al,
randomized 160 patients who underwent scheduled
iso-lated CABG to receive either carvedilol or not [27]
Postoperative paroxysmal AF was 15% in carvedilol
group (p = 0.009) White et al, assigned randomly 41
patients after CABG to receive prophylactic timolol or
placebo Timolol 0.5 mg diluted in 10 ml of saline was
given IV over 1 min twice daily only when patient
condition was stable, following oral timolol twice daily for 7 days Timolol decreased significantly (p < 0.05) the episodes of supraventricular tachycardia as well as of AF and/or flutter [28] Lamb et al, randomized 60 patients underwent CABG treated with atenolol or not Remark-ably, 37% of patients in control group experienced a sypraventricular arrhythmia compared to 3% in atenolol group (p = 0.001) [29] Several studies compared the efficacy of iv or oral b-blocker as well as different types
of b-blocker Halonen et al, in an attempt to compare the iv with the oral use of metoprolol, randomized 240 patients who underwent first on pump CABG, aortic valve replacement or combined aortic valve replacement and CABG [30] In both groups, the metoprolol admin-istration was based on heart rate for a 48 hour period Postoperative AF presented a significant decrease (p = 0.036) in IV group (16.8%) compared to oral group (28.1%) It should be mentioned that patients at risk to develop complications associated with IV metoprolol were excluded Also, Maniar et al randomized 47 patients for elective CABG to receive either esmolol IV
or standard oralb-blocker (propanolol/metoprolol) [31] Esmolol was given within 6 to 18 hours of arrival to recovery room, continued for up to 24 hours and then these patients transitioned to oral b-blocker The inci-dence of postoperative AF was the same (26%) in both groups However, patients in esmolol group developed significant adverse effects (hypotension, symptomatic bradycardia, CHF) compared to oral b-blocker An important limitation was that patients in oralb-blocker group received greater number of bypass grafts than in the esmolol group Similarly, Balcetyte - Harris et al [32], showed that the tolerance to esmolol was poor, and that its effectiveness in the prevention of atrial fibrillation was not better than oral b-blockers
Moreover, comparison of the effectiveness between metoprolol and carvedilol has also been performed Especially, Acikel et al [33], randomized 110 patients scheduled for elective CABG to receive either metopro-lol (50 mg td) or carvedimetopro-lol (12, 5 mg td) Therapy was started 3 days prior to surgery and continued in the postoperative period with mean dosages of carvedilol (13 mg daily) and metorpolol (58 mg/day) in corre-sponding groups Postoperative AF had an incidence of 36.4% in metorpolol compared to 16% in carvedilol group (p = 0.029) Also, Hafgjoo et al [34], randomized
120 patients underwent CABG to receive metoprolol or carvedilol In this study, the therapy was started 10 days prior the surgery and initiated with an oral dose of car-vedilol 6.25 mg and 25 mg metoprolol twice daily respectively Then the dosage was increased until the maximum tolerated dose The incidence of postoperative
AF was significantly reduced (p = 0.022) in carvedilol (15%) compared with metoprolol (33%) group However,
Trang 3the study presented several limitations: it was a single
centre study consisted of small number of patients and
thus, inflammation markers such as CRP had not been
measured, despite the hypothesis that anti-inflammatory
properties of carvedilol may have contributed to
increased efficacy Finally, several studies compared
ate-nolol with other regiments such as digitalis or
propafe-none Yazicioglu et al [35], randomized 160 patients
underwent CABG into 4 groups of treatment: a digoxin
and atenolol, b digoxin, c atenolol, d placebo The
combination of atenolol and digitalis (5%) decreased
sig-nificantly postoperative AF compared with placebo
(25%, p = 0.012) but there was no significant difference
compared to digoxin or atenolol alone (17.9%, 15.4% p =
0.087) Merrick et al [36], in SPPAF trial allocated
randomly 207 patients underwent non-emergency
car-diac surgery, to receive orally either propafenone 300 mg
twice daily or atenolol 50 mg once daily from the first
until the 7th postoperative day or until an end point
(AF appearance) was reached The atenolol and the
pro-pafenone presented equal efficacy (10, 7% vs 12%) in the
prevention of AF
Sotalol
Sotalol is a b-blocker that also disposes Class III
anti-arrhythmic characteristics The effectiveness of sotalol
has been proved in placebo control trials [37,38]
Pfis-terer et al [37], randomized 255 patients, who referred
for CABG or aortic valve operation, to receive either 80
mg of sotalol orally or matching placebo Sotalol
reduced significantly (p = 0.0012) the rate of
postopera-tive sypraventricular tachy-arrhythmia from 46%
(pla-cebo) to 26% as well as the length of hospital stay (p <
0.05) Preoperative b-blockers therapy was stopped
before the surgery, fact that might have been responsible
for increasing incidence of SVA arrhythmia in placebo
group Gomes et al, randomized 130 patients underwent
open heart surgery, to receive sotalol (80 mg to 120 mg)
or placebo [38] Sotalol significantly decreased (p <
0.001) postoperative AF (12.5%) compared to placebo
(38%) An important limitation was the low number of
participants Several randomized controlled trials
com-pared sotalol to conventional b-blockers The largest
study was by Suttorp et al [39,40], who performed a
four-arm study comparing low or high doses of sotalol
or propranolol in 429 patients Sotalol 40 mg tds
resulted in an incidence of 14% of AF compared with
19% incidence of low dose propranolol, revealing no
sta-tistical significance Auer et al [41] randomized 312
patients underwent cardiac surgery into four groups: 1
metoprolol in combination with oral amiodarone, 2
metoprolol, 3 Sotalol, 4 placebo The incidence of AF
was 32% with sotalol and 40% with metoprolol, although
this was again non-significant Combined metoprolol
and amiodarone as well as sotalol had a significant lower frequence of AF than placebo (30.2%, 31.7%, 53.8% respectively P < 0.01) Sanjuan et al [42] studied
253 patients and demonstrated a significant reduction of
AF from 22% to 10% comparing atenolol with sotalol Janssen et al [43], randomized 130 patients to sotalol, metoprolol or no therapy Only 2.4% of patients receiv-ing sotalol went into AF, compared with 15% in the metoprolol group and 36% of controls, which was a sig-nificant finding Parikka et al [44] randomised 191 patients to receive either sotalol or metoprolol Post-operative AF observed in only 16% of patients receiving sotalol compared with 32% of those receiving metopro-lol (p < 0.01) Nystrom et al [45], randomised 101 patients to high dose sotalol or (1/2) dose b-blockers Postoperative AF occurred in 10% of patients in sotalol group compared with 29% in the b-blocker group, revealing a statistical significant diferrence (p = 0.028) Abdulrahman et al [46], randomized 191 patients to sotalol or metoprolol The incidence of AF was 10% in the sotalol group and 22% in the metoprolol group Finally, Crystal et al [47], briefly summarized these stu-dies and demonstrated that the incidence of AF in the sotalol groups was 12% compared with 22% in the b-blocker groups, which was a significant finding In these studies, either 40 mg tds or 80 mg bd were safe but doses higher than those associated with a higher inci-dence of side effects Wunderman et al [48], performed
a meta-analysis including 10 randomized trials (1403 patients) comparing sotalol and amiodarone Incidences
of postoperative AF in sotalol group were 21.5% versus 14.1% in amiodarone group, presenting no significant difference Also, the adverse effects that required drug discontinuation as well as the length of hospital stay was similar between two regiments Sotalol can be proar-rhythmic as in non-surgical patients the proarproar-rhythmic risk has been reported to be 4.3-5.9% Because of the proarrhythmic effects of sotalol, ordinary beta-blockers are a safer alternative to sotalol in the prevention of AF after surgery [2]
Amiodarone
Amiodarone has been proved to be useful in the preven-tion of postoperative AF Mitchel et al, in the PAPA-BEAR trial randomized 600 patients, who were listed for non-emergent CABG and/or valve replacement/repair surgery, to receive amiodarone or placebo [49] In amio-darone group (n = 299) amioamio-darone was given orally 10 mg/kg/day 6 days prior to surgery through 6 days after the surgery (13 days), whereas placebo was administered for the same period Remarkably, amiodarone reduced significantly (p < 0.001) postoperative AF incidence (16.1%) compared to placebo (29.5%) Also, Daud et al [50], randomized 124 patients underwent elective
Trang 4cardiac surgery to receive oral amiodarone (600 mg/day
prior and 200 mg/day after surgery) or placebo for 7
days prior the surgery until the discharge Similarly,
amiodarone presented a statistically significant (p =
0.03) decrease in postoperative AF incidence (23%)
com-pared to placebo (42%) Redle et al, evaluated 150
patients undergoing CABG in a randomized double
blind controlled trial, comparing amiodarone with
pla-cebo [51] In amiodarone group, the two grams were
given in a graduated dosing schedule and then the
patients received 400 mg/day beginning on the first
postoperative day and continued for seven days The
incidence of postoperative AF was not affected by the
prophylactic oral amiodarone as there was no difference
between the two groups (p = 0.3) A serious study
lim-itation was that the contaminant use of digoxin, calcium
channel blocker andb-blocker was not controlled
The duration and dosage of amiodarone has also been
evaluated Especially, Giri et al, in AFIST I trial divided
randomly 220 patients over 60 years of age into two
groups: amiodarone and placebo [52] Amiodarone was
given orally beginning either the first postoperative day
at dosage of 6 gr over 6 days or the 5th preoperative
day at dosage of 7 gr over 10 days The incidence of
postoperative AF was reduced in amiodarone (28%)
group compared to placebo (38%) but without revealing
any significant difference (p = 0.01) White et al [53], in
AFIST II, trial randomized 160 patients underwent
car-diothoracic surgery to amiodarone or placebo and then
to pacing or no pacing using a 2×2 fractional design All
therapies began within 6 hrs post surgery Amiodarone
was given by intravenous infusion for the first 24 hrs
(1050 mg total) followed by oral therapy (400 mg three
times daily) for 4 postoperative days (4800 mg total)
Atrial septal pacing was given for 96 hrs Amiodarone
reduced the risk of AF by 43% and the risk of
sympto-matic AF by 68% (p = 0.037 and p = 0.019) versus
pla-cebo Atrial septal pacing did not reduce AF or
symptomatic AF incidence compared to no pacing
Notably, the risk of postoperative AF in patients
receiv-ing amiodarone and pacreceiv-ing was lower than the placebo/
no pacing and the placebo/pacing groups (57.9% and
60.5% reductions, p = 0.047 and p = 0.040 respectively)
The effect of intravenous amiodarone therapy has also
been investigated Guarnieri et al [54], in ARCH trial
randomized 300 patients underwent open heart surgery
to amiodarone infusion or placebo The drug infusion
was started within 3 hours of entering the surgical ICU
amiodarone was infused at rate of 1 gr over 24 hrs for 2
days (2 g total) Postoperative atrial fibrillation occurred
35% in amiodarone group versus 47% in placebo,
reveal-ing no statistically significant difference (p = 0.01)
Similarly, Yagdi et al [55], randomized 157 patients to
amiodarone infusion or placebo Amiodarone infusion
without a loading dose was given at a dose of 10 mg/kg/ day within 2 hours of entering the cardiovascular ICU for 48 hours On 2nd postoperative oral amiodarone was initiated at 600 mg/day three times daily for 5 days,
400 mg per day twice daily for the following 5 days, and
200 mg per day in a single dose for the last 20 days Amiodarone did not reduce significantly postoperative
AF incidence compared to placebo (19, 4% vs 25%) Ker-stein et al [56], randomized 143 patients that were scheduled for CABG to amiodarone infusion or placebo
IV amiodarone, 0.73 mg/min, without any loading dose was administered on call to the operating room for 48
h, and followed by oral amiodarone, 400 mg q12 h, for the next 3 days Atrial fibrillation occurred in 3 of 51 patients (5.88%) in the amiodarone group, compared to
24 of 92 patients (26.08%) in the control group, present-ing no statistical significant difference Of note, most patients also received b-blockers and this study is lim-ited by its non-randomised design Also, Lee et al [57], began i.v amiodarone 3 days before CABG and contin-ued it for 5 days after surgery The incidence of AF was lower and the duration shorter in the amiodarone group than in the placebo group (12% vs 34%), respectively Doerge et al [58], randomized 150 patients into amio-darone or placebo groups Amioamio-darone given IV for 3 days following surgery did not decrease the incidence of
AF Treggiari-Venzi et al [59], conducted a randomized controlled double-blind trial in which patients received amiodarone postoperatively (900 g/days for 72 h) and demonstrated that the decrease in AF was not statisti-cally significant
The efficacy of amiodarone has also been compared with other agents such as b-blockers, sotalol, digoxin and diltiazem Especially, Tokmakoglu et al [60], allo-cated randomly 241 patients, undergoing elective CABG into three groups Patients in first group (i) received metoprolol 100 mg/24 h per oral preoperatively, 2×0.5
mg digoxin intravenously in the early postoperative per-iod and 0.25 mg digoxin in combination with 100 mg metoprolol per os on the first postoperative day until discharge Patients in second group (ii) received totally
1200 mg IV/24 hrs amiodarone which the 300 mg-bolus dose/1 hour was given as soon as the operation had been finished On the next day patients were given
450 mg/24 h amiodarone IV and then 600 mg/day in three doses per os until discharge Third group was the control group with no prophylaxis AF occurred in 16.8%, 8, 3% and 33.6% of patients in group i, ii and iii respectively Both study groups were significantly effec-tive in the prevention of post-CABG AF with respect to control group (p < 0.01 in group i and p < 0.001 in group ii versus control) Sleilaty et al [61], randomized
200, admitted for elective CABG to receive oral amio-darone or oral bisoprolol beggining 6 hrs after surgery
Trang 5Amiodarone patients received 15 mg/kg, followed by 7
mg/kg/d until discharge and then 200 mg/d for one
month The patients in bisoprolol group received 2.5 mg
then 2.5 mg bid bisoprolol indefinitely in the
postopera-tive period Postoperapostopera-tive AF occurred in 15.3% of the
patients in the amiodarone group and 12.7% of the
patients in the bisoprolol group showing no significant
difference concerning the onset time of AF episode,
total duration and recurrence of AF On the contrary,
Solomon et al [62] performed a randomized study on
102 consecutive patients undergoing cardiovascular
sur-gery The patients were randomized to receive
amiodar-one (1 gr/day intravenously for 48 hrs, then 400 mg/day
orally until discharge) or propranolol (1 mg
intrave-nously every 6 hrs for 48 hrs, then 20 mg orally four
times a day until discharge) The incidence of
post-operative AF was significantly lower in amiodarone
group (16%) compared to propranolol treated patients
(32.7%, p = 0.05), showing the superiority of
amiodar-one Mooss et al, in REDUCE trial evaluated 160
patients underwent CABG, combined CABG and AVR
surgery, or AVR surgery alone [63] Patients were
ran-domized to receive either sotalol 80 mg twice daily or
intravenous amiodarone 15 mg/kg over 24 hrs followed
by oral amiodarone 200 mg three times daily
Postopera-tive AF occurred in 17% of patients randomized to
amiodarone and in 25% of those randomized to sotalol,
revealing no significant difference (p = 0.21) and further
similar efficacy between two regiments On the other
side, Mikroulis et al, randomized 120 patients
under-went CABG to receive amiodarone (300 mg IV, followed
by 1 gr IV daily for 48 hrs, then 400 mg IV daily for
further 48 hrs) or diltiazem(continuous
infusion/mini-mum dose 0.1 mg/kg/h) followed by an oral b-blocker
for the remainder of their hospitalization [64] The
inci-dence of post-CABG AF was not significantly different
between amiodarone (11.7%) and diltiazem (10%)
Finally, meta-analyses concerning prophylactic effect
of amiodarone in prevention of postoperative cardiac
surgery have also been performed Particularly, Bagshaw
et al, performed a meta-analysis included 19 randomized
control trials (3295 patients) of amiodarone [65]
Amio-darone significantly reduced the odds ratio of AF (p <
0.0001), ventricular tachyarrhythmias (p < 0.0001),
strokes (p = 0.02) as well as duration of hospitalization
(p < 0.0001) Also, Haan et al [66], evaluated 7
rando-mized control trials including 1064 patients They
con-cluded that amiodarone decreased the incidence of
postoperative AF in all of the studies, and reached
sta-tistical significance in two [57,66] Patel A et al [67],
analyzed 18 randomized controlled trials enrolling 3408
patients so as to assess the safety of amiodarone in
pre-vention of postoperative AF Notably, they showed that
amiodarone is associated with an increased risk of
developing bradycardia and hypotension especially when average daily dose of IV amiodarone exceeds 1 gr Finally, Crystal et al [47], summarized ten randomized controlled trials and reported an incidence of AF of 22.5% in the amiodarone groups and an incidence of 37% in control groups
Magnesium
Low magnesium concentrations are independent risk factors of AF after cardiovascular surgery Several stu-dies have been conducted using magnesium as prophy-laxis agent postoperatively
Kohno et al, evaluated 200 patients who underwent isolated initial CABG operation in a not randomized ret-rospective study [68] The first 100 patient did not receive prophylactic treatment, whereas the next 100 patients were treated with 10 mmol of magnesium sul-fate infused IV daily for 3 days after surgery The inci-dence of post-operative atrial fibrillation was 35% in the untreated group compared with 16% in the magnesium group (p = 0.002) An important limitation is the lack of randomization and the nature of retrospective analysis that have weakened the cogency of the study
Kaplan et al [69], conducted a randomized study on
200 consecutive patients in whom they performed initial elective CABG In treatment group 100 patients received
3 g magnesium intravenously preoperatively, periopera-tively and for the 3 following postoperative days No sig-nificant difference was found compared to the control group, although in a sub-analysis of patients who had low pre-operative serum magnesium, a significant reduc-tion (p < 0.05) in AF was demonstrated Yeatman et al [70], performed the largest study on magnesium prophy-laxis Especially, 400 patients were randomized in a dou-ble blind fashion to receive 40 mmol of 2 mmol/ml magnesium sulphate in the cardioplegia solution or con-trols The incidence of AF was 22% in the magnesium group compared with 29% in controls, which was non-significant, although the findings were significant in a subset analysis of urgent patients However, authors acknowledged that they should have used a higher dose
of magnesium to obtain a concentration nearer to 15 mmol/l of cardioplegia, as their dose only produced a concentration of 5 mmol/l Similarly, Zangrillo et al [71], randomized 160 consecutive patients underwent elective isolated, off-pump CABG to receive either 2.5
gr magnesium sulphate infusion intraoperatevely over 30 minutes or normal saline solution Postoperative atrial fibrillation occurred in 20% of patients treated with magnesium and in 22.5% of patients in placebo group (p
= 0.9), revealing no statistical difference between the two groups On the contrary, Toraman et al, performed
an randomized contolled study in 200 patients, giving them either 6 mmol of magnesium both pre-operatively
Trang 6and post-operatively or placebo [72] Only 2% of
patients receiving magnesium went into AF compared
with 21% in the control group Unfortunately, patients
receiving b-blockers or digoxin were excluded Also,
Hazelrigg et al, randomized 105 patients to receive 80
mg/kg of magnesium pre-operatively, then 8 mg/(kg h)
post-operatively for 48 h or placebo in 97 patients [73]
Thirty two patients treated with magnesium went into
AF compared with 41 control patients, which was a
non-significant trend towards benefit However, the
reduction in AF was significantly different between
groups on day 1 Fanning et al, performed a randomized
study in which patients received either magnesium 178
mEq or placebo for 4 days following surgery, showing
that the incidence of AF was lower in the magnesium
group [74] Moreover, Maslow et al, conducted a
retro-spective study included patients undergoing beating
heart CABG and demonstrated that magnesium treated
patients were less likely to experience postoperative AF
than other patients (12% vs 29%) [75] On the other
hand, Wistbacka et al [76], performed a double-blind
study so as to assess the dosage of magnesium in the
prevention of AF Of note, the highest dose of
magne-sium (4.2 g before surgery, 11.9 g infusion the first
post-operative day and 5.5 g the following day) decreased the
incidence of AF more than lower doses (4.2 g, 2.9 g, 1.4
g) Jensen et al instead found that magnesium decreased
the duration of AF and flutter, but did not decrease the
incidence of AF [77]
In the meantime, there are also negative studies about
the preventive effect of magnesium Particularly, Parikka
et al, performed a study in which 70 mmol of
magne-sium was given in the first 48 h after surgery [78] No
effect on the incidence of AF was seen, while a high
serum magnesium level increased the incidence of AF
In a study of Karmy-Jones et al [79], 14.4 g of
magne-sium was given during the first 24 h postoperatively but
no effect of magnesium on the incidence of
supraventri-cular tachycardia was shown
Magnesium has also combined or compared with
other agents such as sotalol Aerra et al, evaluated 103
consecutive coronary patients that received sotalol and
magnesium or placebo [80] These patients received 40
mg of sotalol orally twice daily from the first
post-operative day for 6 weeks and 2 g of magnesium
intra-venously immediately post surgery and on the first
post-operative day The incidence of atrial fibrillation in the
sotalol and magnesium group was 13.5% compared to
27.0% in the controls (p = 0.025) However, the study
had serious limitations: retrospective, not randomized
and under one surgeon’s care In addition, Forlani et al
[81], performed a randomized controlled trial, separating
207 patients into four groups Patients received either
sotalol 80 mg bd or magnesium 1.5 g orally for 6 days
postoperatively or both or neither treatment Remarkably, only 1 of 52 patients who received both treatments went into AF compared with 19 of 50 control patients In con-trast, Bert et al [82], performed a multi-arm study in 387 patients randomized into six groups of prophylaxis: con-trol, magnesium only, digoxin only, magnesium and digoxin, propranolol only, and magnesium and pro-pranolol Patients randomized to a regimen including magnesium received 12 g given during 96 hours post-operatively Unfortunately, addition of magnesium had
no beneficial effect as compared with b-blockers, digoxin
or controls
Several meta-analyses concerning magnesium have also been published Shiga et al [83], performed a meta-analysis included 17 randomized control trials (2069 patients) summarising papers that contained magnesium alone as prophylaxis and compared it to placebo treat-ment Magnesium supplementation reduced significantly the risk of supraventricular arrhythmias (p = 0.002) after cardiac surgery by 23%, of AF by 29% and of ventricular arrhythmias by 48% (p < 0.0001) However, magnesium had no notable effect on length of hospitalization, inci-dence of myocardial infarction or mortality They also summarised the complications reported in 648 patients They found no episodes of bradycardia or hypotension
Of note, important differences were found between all these studies and no one prophylactic regime was found
to be superior to another Regimes ranged from a single dose of 5 mmol in the cardioplegia solution to 110 mmol over the course of 3 days Miller et al, performed
a meta-analysis included 20 randomized trials with 2490 patients [84] They showed that postoperative AF was reduced from 28% in the control group to 18% in the treatment group with significant heterogeneity between the trials Also, magnesium did not significantly reduce hospitalisation duration or mortality Again, they did not recommend one specific magnesium prophylactic regimen Finally, the most recent meta-analysis by Alghamdi et al [85], summarized only eight randomized controlled trials that compared magnesium with pla-cebo They also found a highly significant reduction in relative risk with the addition of magnesium
Other pharmacological prevention Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications have also been tested as prophylaxis of post-CABG AF Cheruku
et al [86], randomized 100 patients to receive either ketorolac 30 mg IV/6 hour followed by ibuprophen 600
mg p.o three times daily for 7 days or no drugs Of note, postoperative AF was reduced from 28.6% (control group) to 9.8% in the ibuprophen group (p = 0.017) Two randomized controlled trials have also been con-ducted concerning the effect of corticosteroids Espe-cially, Halonen et al [87], evaluated 241 consecutive
Trang 7patients, underwent first CABG and/or aortic valve
replacement in a double-blind multicenter trial Patients
were randomized to receive either 100 mg
hydrocorti-sone or placebo The incidence of postoperative AF was
significantly lower in hydrocortisone group (30%)
com-pared to placebo (48%, p = 0.004) Also, Prasongsukarn
et al [88], randomized 86 patients underwent elective
first time CABG to 1 gr of methylprednisolone IV
before surgery and 4 mg of dexamethasone IV every 6
hours for 1 day after surgery or placebo Postoperative
AF was significantly lower in steroid group (21%)
com-pared to placebo group (51%, p = 0.003) However,
patients in steroid group presented more complications
and further prolonged hospitalization Also, the effect of
antioxidant agent N-acetylcysteine (NAC) has been
eval-uated in postoperative AF Ozaydin et al [89], conducted
a prospective; double-blind trial consisted of 115
patients undergoing CABG and/or valve surgery that
randomized to NAC or placebo The incidence of
post-operative AF was lower in NAC (5.2%) compared to
pla-cebo (21.1%, p = 0.019) but the mean postoperative
hospital stay was similar in both groups (p = 0.82)
Bothe et al [90], evaluated 11 randomized trials (468
patients) referring to the effect of
glucose-insulin-potas-sium therapy (GIK) after cardiac surgery Particularly,
the findings indicate that GIK may considerably improve
postoperative recovery of contractile function and
further reduce the incidence of postoperative AF
Finally, ARMYDA-3 a randomized, prospective,
double-blind, placebo-controlled trial evaluated the effect of
atorvastatin in reducing postoperative AF in 200
patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery [91]
Treat-ment with atorvastatin 40 mg/day initiated one week
before surgery, significantly reduced the incidence of
postoperative AF versus placebo (35% vs 57%, p =
0.003) On the contrary, Virani et al [92], conducted a
retrospective cohort analysis consisted of 4044 patients
underwent cardiac surgery without a history of chronic
or paroxysmal AF that dived into two groups: those
who received preoperative statin therapy and those who
did not They demonstrated that preoperative statin
therapy was not associated with decreased incidence of
postoperative AF including patients with severe left
ven-tricular dysfunction
Conclusions
In conclusion, b-blockers should routinely be used as
first choice for the prophylaxis of AF in all patients
undergoing cardiac surgery, unless otherwise
contraindi-cated (Grade A recommendation based on level 1a
stu-dies) [3] Sotalol may be more effective than standard
b-blockers for the prevention of AF without causing an
excess of side effects (Grade A recommendation based
on level 1b studies) Amiodarone should be used for
prophylaxis of AF in all patients undergoing cardiac sur-gery in which b-blocker therapy is not possible (Grade
A recommendation based on level 1a and1b studies) In high-risk patients receiving b-blocker therapy for pro-phylaxis of AF, amiodarone may also be used as addi-tional prophylaxis with an acceptably low incidence of complications [3] These patients should be protected from the complications of bradycardia with temporary pacing wires being placed intra-operatively (Grade A recommendation based on level 1b studies) [3]
Authors ’ contributions All authors: 1 have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2 have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revisiting it critically for important intellectual content; 3 have given final approval of the version to
be published.
Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Received: 20 August 2010 Accepted: 30 November 2010 Published: 30 November 2010
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doi:10.1186/1749-8090-5-121
Cite this article as: Koniari et al.: Pharmacologic prophylaxis for atrial
fibrillation following cardiac surgery: a systematic review Journal of
Cardiothoracic Surgery 2010 5:121.
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